


Moondance

by BlackMajjicDuchess



Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Coming of Age, Courage, Dark, Dubious Morality, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insanity, Madness, Poetry, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 02:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 9,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackMajjicDuchess/pseuds/BlackMajjicDuchess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At four, she is the youngest ever to be admitted into ANBU, and without any formal training prerequisites. For most, ANBU is the necessary darker side of peace. For her, ANBU is the necessary brighter side of hell.</p><p>The masks hid more than faces.</p><p>Yugao-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. New Moon

**Author's Note:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> New Moon: disk completely in shadow

“I want to be ANBU,” she said, and her voice was empty and _far_ _too young._

Sarutobi Hiruzen turned in his chair, and his first thought was that he was hearing phantoms. For the briefest of moments, he considered that he might have died already. He blinked and looked around, seeing no one there. He almost turned back to his window, cursing old age for addling his brain, when a breath was exhaled and a miniature flag of purple bangs like a raised hand in class alerted him to her presence. He blinked, disbelieving, to meet a pair of brown eyes. Nose and chin remained below the edge. All he saw was the half moon of her forehead and the improbable purple of her hair. 

She was _maybe_ four if he was any judge of age at all. Her youth was troubling enough, but that wasn’t what sent the chill worming its way up his spine. In a military operation, generals and captains appreciated skill and experience. Nothing else mattered to the _true_ hellions of war, and though Sarutobi was aging and famed for his compassion, he hadn’t earned his position as Hokage by throwing away the sharp, dangerous gifts that sometimes found their way into his hands. _She_ was that. He’d passed children into the ranks of shinobi against the advice of his friends before. He hadn’t regretted a single one, either, but his reasoning had to be _perfectly_ watertight. On one side of the balance was a shinobi that _belonged_ , half-trained from the beginning, devoted and dutiful.

On the other pan lay the dusty remains of his soul, the blood price for child sacrifice.

The trouble was in her eyes. Too dark, soulless, eyes that _saw_ and _had seen._ It was said that eyes were the windows of the soul, but when he looked into hers he saw nothing in there. Maybe that wasn’t quite accurate, he realized as he peered harder. There _was_ something there, but it was so haunting and loathsome that he ended up looking away uncomfortably. And _that_ … that had _never_ happened. He cleared his throat once. Twice. Looked back into her eyes and chastised himself for indecorous behavior. She was just a child after all, no matter how ancient her eyes were.

 _She_ was rock solid. Unblinking, dark eyes stared back at him. If the child was at all intimidated by the Hokage’s scrutiny, she hid it well. He asked her all the same questions he asked of adults in her position: _who, where, what, when,_ and _why_.

“Who are you?” 

“Uzuki Yugao.” Her tone was clipped and matter-of-fact, the words mechanical and despised.

“Where are your parents?”

“Looking for me.” The edge of ferocity crept into her tone and her brown eyes narrowed sharply, flagging his thoughts with alarm.

“What did they do?” 

“Bad things.” The breath of wrath and hatred, chilling and concerning.

 _So many_ secrets contained in those two words. Answers he didn't want. Answers no one would want. He'd seen the world and the very worst it had to offer, and he wanted nothing to do with _that_ answer. Luckily her eyes told the truth. He didn't have to ask and he didn't make her tell. And with such nightmares nipping at her tiny heels… he found her attitude more acceptable than the alternative most in her situation might have demonstrated. He returned to the facts instead. _“_ When did you run away?” 

“Two days ago.” 

“Why do you want to be ANBU?” 

“So they never find me again.” 

...

He drafted the papers. She didn’t know how to write yet, so he filled in the blanks for her and sent her to headquarters with her application in hand. She didn’t say thank you. He didn’t ask any more questions. And when the door shut, he shook with tremors that had nothing to do with age and let silent tears slide down his face. For a child who had to stand a-tiptoe to look him in the eye to flee the comfort of her own home seeking solace amongst the ranks of killers told him enough. She wanted to be a ghost, but a _living_ ghost, whole and unbroken. He sent up prayers to the above that he’d done the right thing. He wondered that too often. His poor, wretched soul was on that balance so often, now. It shouldn't seem strange any longer. 

She was the youngest he'd ever allowed into ANBU. A girl child, almost a toddler, with no shinobi training.

But she was _his_ ANBU, and not Danzo's. Her emptiness was not permanent. He knew he shouldn't be so comforted by such a flimsy advantage, but then again... _he_ was Hokage, and not Danzo. If being the leader of Konoha was only based on proper military utilization of dangerous, sharp gifts, things might have been a little different. 

And though she'd never lifted a kunai in her life, she'd already learned more than three quarters of what any ANBU operative needed to know: how to survive the worst, body, mind _and_ soul.


	2. Waxing Crescent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> Waxing crescent: left side lit disk 1-49%

She didn’t know what the old man had written on the piece of paper, but the man behind the counter in the strange white mask took too long a time to read it. She didn’t think he’d written all that much, but she swallowed her impatience and did her best to emulate the graceful ninja in the shapeless grey uniforms and quirky masks she’d seen once upon a time. They were like superheroes, to her, in grey and black and splashes of red. She’d saved their images and wrapped them around her knuckles as if she were drowning, and she held tight and waited for the pull.

She pretended she was born again, a kitten on day one. One tiny, mewling, graceless step at a time. The man behind the counter read and reread the note, glancing between the paper and her. At long last, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Captain’s going to have a fit, but what am I supposed to do?” 

She was smart enough to realize he wasn’t asking her. In the end, though, he pushed a boxed uniform through the slot. There was a mask atop it that appeared to be a cat. She grinned, pleased at the perfection in the choice.

The man behind the counter shuddered, but she didn’t notice.

Her captain was a humorless man with a mask she couldn’t recognize. He stood tall over her and stared down with his arms crossed, sizing her up. She wondered why he kept staring, but merely assumed it was because she was little. The impression was not improved by the way the fabric sagged around her body or how ill the armor fit. She had expected her size to be a topic of debate. She wondered if he meant to scare her, or if he was at all perturbed by the fact that it wasn’t working. She didn’t fear this man or anyone else that had been—and still were—staring. She simply was not going to go home. ANBU was her home now. She was sure too many minutes had passed without a single word, though her concept of time was malformed, so she did what she thought she was supposed to, and spoke one of her own. Two. Her name. “Uzuki Yugao,” she stated simply.

“No,” he grated back. His voice was scratchy and loud, barked in command. His chin angled up and away from her, haloed with shadows as he regarded his men. “Whatever you want, you won’t find it here, no matter what the Hokage says.”

“Sir?” she beseeched, confused.

“No is my final answer. Get you gone from here.”

She remained, stubbornly rooted to the floorboards at the heels. There was no other response. She didn’t have one. This is where she wanted to be. This was where she belonged. She had permission to be here, and she had no reason to leave. _Every_ reason to stay. One man with the word _no_ was not going to be enough, no matter his rank.

“Look, girl,” he began again, the quiet tonality of his voice laced with hints of displeasure. “You’re too young. You’re just a little girl. You don’t know the first thing about being a shinobi. But furthermore, I definitely can’t do anything with you if you don’t even know how to”—he tipped his head down toward her, the staring eyes and smiling quality of his mask at odds with his voice—“follow a simple order to _leave.”_

She nearly did, her eyes dropping to the space between her toes. But the way he’d said it suggested that he _was_ , in fact, _considering_ her application, or he’d not have bothered to rebuke her for breaking an order. She ate her smile, though, and her eyes lifted back to his mask. “I can’t.”

“Oh?” he mused. “And why not?”

“I don’t have anywhere to go.”

He stilled, and she understood, then, what Sarutobi had appended to her application. He _knew_. The man behind the counter _knew_. She was in a room crowded with full fledged shinobi that knew the upper limits of their abilities and pushed them constantly, and all eyes were upon _her_ , and upon _him_ with his eyes upon her. He had an order from the Hokage in hand. Among their kind, it was the only law that mattered. “Hatake,” he barked. 

“Sir.” The new voice was young, if older than hers. 

“Break her in.” 

“Sir.”

That was it, the end of her induction. The boy that met her eyes when she turned toward him froze her solid, for it was like looking into a mirror—even if she didn’t know it at the time. His expression was flat and lifeless, almost bored. A scar cut across one eye, though the color drew her eye more. Red, like the blood on the sword she’d once seen. As red as she knew her own to be, too. It was his utter _lack_ of pity, though, like he had seen something _so much worse_ , that made her feel accepted. In his face, she saw her success. She would learn. _He_ would teach her what none of the others would. 

“Hatake Kakashi,” he supplied.

“Don’t take it easy on me, please,” she pleaded, a bit breathless, meeting his mismatched stare with a bravery that was waning by the second.

His face withered with ugliness. It was simple; a twitch at the corner of one eye, the nasty twist of his lips, the _almost_ shrug of a shoulder. His head tilted forward, and she heard the sneer in his voice concealed beneath the black mask. She learned much just in the cadaverous sound of his voice. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t.”


	3. First Quarter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> First quarter: left side lit disk 50%

The sun set like blood on fire the night of her first kill, and the night sky opened in monochrome. Black sky, white moon, thin grey fog. Kakashi’s washed out hair, every hue between ivory and thundercloud. Dark shadows, fleeting between ebony and charcoal. The cold mist of breath, sometimes the color of dull stone, sometimes glinting silver in the light of the moon. White mask. Black cloak. Blotchy clouds, dirty grey smeared with tar and punctured with points of light. Pale stars. The world was leached of color in every cardinal direction, chill and lifeless and undisturbed.

The blankness of it all was comfortable. Unassuming, quiet palette of sky and shade. No sudden movements, no blinding flashes, no loud swathes of color interrupting somber thought. They had a mission to complete, and discipline was the name of the game. She felt like a wild animal creeping through the brush. Silence, slowness, and caution kept her calm and focused. Ahead of her, Kakashi’s fingers flickered in an errant ray of moonlight.

Pale white fingers. Climbing, stretching shadows of void. Light heart and dark significance.

They detached, bone-white masks blending with light-swallowing holes in existence. She lost sight of him immediately, but her gaze was for the target. Black hair, shadowed silver eyes. A glinting fang in stark contrast to the deep cast of his face, veiled in a grey cloak, mantled in the quiet depth of evening. He was to be her first kill. Her target. Buried in his flesh encasement was a beating black heart. Child- _stealer_. Child- _hurter_. Child- _killer_. A despicable man. 

The still pond of her thoughts rippled, shattered by the sudden disturbance created by his character. Deeply suppressed memories, almost forgotten, but not quite, burst into the night air, bubbles carried below by his weight. _Drown him, yes. Grasp him by the throat and drag him down. Sharp steel wires, wrapped around his ankles, howl of terror, water cascading down his throat._ She paused, curiously drawn to the dark path down which her thoughts had wandered. A wry smile bent her lips without her knowledge, and pretty words clutched her heart. _Calm waters, black, cold. Silver starlight shivers there. The water is blood._ The muscles of her face twitched. Her lyrics lay broken. Her words had been pretty until that _last word._

She moved into position, thoughts still cradling her desecrated attempt at art. She mourned her error, stare sharpening on the man she was meant to kill. His senses were sharp and alert, a cornered animal who knew he was cornered. By the direction of his flickering whites, though—white eyes, blinking flashes black—he hadn’t sensed them yet. While his eyes settled upon her, she caught Kakashi’s signal beyond their target’s ear, a brief candle of ghost-like skin in the shadows beyond. 

She blinked away her disquiet, still bothered by how the word _blood_ had ruined her gentle, artful wordcraft. Her brow creased as she flooded into the tight space around her target. She stepped in too close, danced upon tiptoes beneath his much larger body, dipping, ducking underneath his swing and bending out of reach like a willow switch. The tanto in her hand dashed upward like a lightning bolt rushing back to the heavens—white flash, _t o t a l  d a r k n e s s_ —and then color and sound alike _exploded_ into her world, overwhelming, engulfing, swallowing her sanity whole. Her eyes widened with sudden awareness, pupils blown out and wild.  

_Red, red, red. Red like poppies in the night time field. Red like the insides of my eyelids at high noon. Red like fire, like abused flesh, like…_

_…like blood. Red like blood like pretty, pretty blood, my blood, his blood,_ all the blood. _The water is blood, blood is in the water, water in the blood. Red on black, on white, on every—_

A cold grasp pinched around her wrist and her fingers splayed open. Something fell. Her head pulsed, thrumming a steady cadence, pressure building in her head. Euphoria blossomed there, bright and flame-red. Her breath came in rapid, shallow pants. When the distorted haze cleared, Kakashi’s mask grinned back at her. She giggled, overcome by how ridiculous it looked in that moment.

“Yugao,” he hissed sharply.

“Kakashi,” she breathed back. Or she thought she did. What came out was a sugary slur that tickled her lips. Her tongue flickered out, dispelling the fizzy tingling feeling. She tasted copper and spice and lapped it up. Then she threw her head back and laughed, long and joyously. 

Until the grip on her wrist tightened like an iron manacle and had her hissing with pain. His eyes stared out of his mask, different somehow. Her smile slipped beneath her own mask. She studied him, trying to figure out why he was different now. It was like looking at an entirely different person. One second passed with Yugao brewing in confusion. Then another, while oversensitized synapses fired slower and slower, returning to normal. A minute of interlocked gazes shook out the revelation she required. Kakashi’s eyes were tight with concern. She blinked curiously, wondering _why_. 

Then her sight fell to where his hand held her solidly. Red. Lifeblood red, sticky between her fingers and painting her armor. She licked her lips again, recognized the taste as blood. Saw the shredded remains of the target at her feet and registered what had happened. Equated the amount of blood and the staring eyes with the meanings of ‘target eliminated’ and ‘mission success.’ She gave a short nod. Even at her default, though, it didn’t bother her in the slightest. She’d seen blood before. She’d leaked her own blood before. She’d tasted blood and _things more vile_ before. The only difference here was that he’d _deserved it_ and she’d done right by shinobi code and the moral fabric of the world. _He_ was dead and _they_ were better for it. 

Her eyes hardened on the grisly scene and locked back onto Kakashi’s. The tightness in his eyes receded an infinitesimal step at a time. His grip lessened. He leaned in close, lowered his voice to quieter than a whisper. A ghost, confessing to another ghost. “You’ll need to learn to pretend you hate it." He let go.

 


	4. Waxing Gibbous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon:  
> \---  
> Waxing gibbous: left side lit disk 51-99%

Pretending was easy. She’d learned how to pretend before she’d learned to walk. Her face softened, sweetened. She smiled more, bared snarls with no affection, though it fooled every eye. She took to wearing lipstick; males seemed to prefer females who wore it. A pretty face lowered a man's guard, making for easier targets. She found morbid pleasure in remembering the way blood tasted, and pretended the cosmetic was that. It helped. _Sometimes,_ the smiles were real.

The taste was off, but the reminder was delicious.

She aged gracefully. Her limbs became slim but flexible, wired with hard muscle disguised as sex. Her brown eyes were large and deceptively guileless. Her hair grew in thick and shiny, and its odd color drew attention. She had an early awareness of what _attention_ meant, though, and ignored the interest of the men who looked her way. Instead, she focused entirely on Kakashi, her senpai, who seemed to have as little interest in her romantically as he did in _everything else._ He was the only one who didn’t pull his punches. The only one who saw her as a weapon first instead of a woman. Her gaze sharpened upon him as her blade sharpened upon him. She saw nothing and no one else, ignoring all others. She obeyed his command alone, unless an order came from higher.

Kakashi was _everything_ , for in him wailed the same malformed sense of morality that she owned. Their childhood lessons had shattered long before they’d been finished, and they’d found what they needed somehow else. ANBU was a haven for the desolate; savagery was given room to stretch its wings and soar the endless black skies. Secrets stayed buried, and they buried still more. Their masks hid more than faces. No one here asked questions.

They gave each other silence. They gave each other solitude with the required dose of company.

But as she grew, her emotions grew, too. Her suppressed memories evolved out of nightmares barely remembered. She recalled everything about why she’d escaped home and come here. She’d been angry, then, but young. She’d known she needed to escape, but hadn’t understood the full gravity of what she’d endured until she’d grown and had a chance to observe other people. Other lives. Families that weren’t messed up, people that were happy, love that was _real_.

When at last she understood, she raged. The sword on her back left its sheath more often than not. It became an extension of her arm, a part of her flesh and soul. Sharp edge, gleaming wetly, her poetic pen. She received warning after warning about her behavior. They threatened to expel her innumerable times-- _from ANBU_ \--for being too dangerous and unpredictable. As with before, she ignored that, too.

Until Kakashi intervened. “They’ll make you leave,” he warned, feet swinging in the air more than a mile into the sky.

She didn’t answer him because she knew it was true. He didn’t say anything else because he knew she had nowhere else to go. Instead, she let her unmasked face tip over upon his shoulder, and her eyes drifted up to peer at him through her lashes. She’d practiced that move. ANBU had used it, too. She was adept at pretending, but she had never pretended with him. They understood and accepted one another. He stared at her for a long while, and then he turned away.

 _“Starlight frames his soul,”_ she recited. _“Darkness, sorrow cloud his heart. The answer is... love.”_

He was quiet for some time, but long silences were not unusual between them. His fingers curled around her shoulder, the pad of one thumb grazed her skin. Perhaps considering? Her eyes followed its path, heart pounding, learning new things she’d never known about herself. She wondered if he would kiss her. And then he did, and it wasn’t what she wanted it to be. His lips pressed to her forehead and not her mouth. As always, left hungry. “I think you meant ‘her,’” he whispered. “Nothing frames my soul but hellfire, and I have no heart left.”

Her heart contracted in a way she didn’t know it could, but she said nothing. So she started pretending with him, too.

* * *

She didn't even know how deeply he'd affected her at first. The negative cloud of unwanted emotion merely followed her around, feeding her doubt and rejection. She remained unaware, tasting and tasting and tasting until she realized at last that she was gorged on it. It was in that moment that she stopped midstride, blinking and confused. Her heart was too-tight and bursting, glutted on that venomous cloud, and it left her abysmally empty, starved and aching. Confidence and poise were replaced with self-loathing and resentment.

He always had been her mirror.

She'd _almost_ forgotten her childhood, but in that moment  _e v e r y t h i n g_   came wailing back. She heard their voices and believed them suddenly, vulnerable as she was. When a woman has waited her entire life for a _word_ that has been denied, her ears will open to all phrases. She heard and she listened, accepted and _believed_. Yes, she was horrid, and ugly, and unwanted. Why had she ever believed otherwise? There was no place in the world for her. There was nowhere to go. She was alone, and she was unworthy. Forever.

_Wretched._

_Useless._

_Awful._

_Wicked._

_Brainless._

Adjectives... adjectives...

 _Stupid, useless girl. Does as she is told or starves._ _Full yet hungry still._

Her words lacked all of the beauty and left her emptier than before. The unbidden thought of Kakashi broke her. She abandoned whatever already forgotten mission she was on and moved, her feet carrying her wherever her shrinking soul desired. She spiraled and twisted, contracting, damning herself with her own cruel thoughts. She remembered on purpose, embraced the hurt, wallowed in it. Their words chased her strength away and called her home.

* * *

The sun set on her still form. The moon came out, not quite full. It wasn't at its brightest yet, but it was trying. It gave off enough light to show her what she'd been staring at since before the warm glow of summer dipped beneath the earth. An empty house with no one it. No chakra. No life.

No parents.

But the taint was even more pronounced than before. Wispy breezes brought the stench of death, chemicals, and rot. Faint and fading... whatever happened here had been cleaned up long ago, but as fixated as she was on the place, she could still detect it. When she closed her eyes, her spirit provided the scent her nose could not. Corruption, terror, evil, pain. Nightmares and cold nights.

Bad things.

The tears never came, but she remained frozen, shut down and not yet rebooted. There was nowhere to go. No one to go to. No solace amongst the killers nor the lovers. Brain impulses fired and fizzled out, halfhearted and weak.

Somewhere in her morass of nonsensical, tangled thoughts, a single word emerged, an involuntary, necessary response. _Moonlight._ She curled around it, her last ditch effort to save herself. It was the only anchor she had left. Prose, the only part of herself that could never be taken.

_Moonlight, moonlight, moonlight... clean and cold. Moonlight, clean and cold._

...

_Moonlight, clean and cold. The sun sets on dark days past. I will love myself._

Her senses pinged with alarm, jarring to readiness, simultaneously annoyed to have been interrupted in her quest for serenity.

"What-"

It was the only word he got out of his mouth before her sword screamed from its sheath and cut a white arc--moonlight, clean and cold--through the night. There was the high, bright note of steel as her blade sang its song to the sky. Her ears filled and rang with it, banishing every thought with simple, violent beauty. Her eyes sharpened and focused on a single point--the vertex where their edges crossed, paper thin and stronger than they seemed. Her muscles locked, keeping pressure on and nothing more, neither advancing nor retreating.

"Now that you'll let me speak," he began again, forcing her to meet his eyes as he smiled wryly. "What interest does ANBU have in _this_ place?"

His voice shook loose her ability to think again. With a liquid shove, she leapt back, putting distance between them. Konoha headband, noted. Relaxed stance, cataloged. He sheathed his sword first, a sign of trust. She licked her lips, narrowed her eyes, assessed... and did the same. He waited for an answer. She remembered that he'd asked a question. Kakashi wouldn't answer a personal question, so she didn't either.

His head tilted to the side only slightly, curious but not overly so. He changed the subject instead. "You move as if that sword"--his eyes pointed toward the weapon--"is part of you."

Different subject, and a happier one. She loved her sword. "It is the best part of me," she admitted, standing straighter and with pride.

He smiled then. He was plain--pale skin, flat eyes, thin lips. Her thoughts automatically compared him to Kakashi and dismissed him out of hand. But he'd managed to keep his head on his shoulders. _Very few_ had managed that much. And, too, there was the dialogue: "Best answer I've ever heard."

* * *

 


	5. Full Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> Full moon: 100% lit disk

* * *

She assumed she had been dismissed from ANBU service. She was right. The mission she abandoned allowed a high ranking member of the fire daimyo’s entourage to be assassinated. Captain wasn’t happy. Sandaime wasn’t happy. She should have been imprisoned for desertion, but she hadn’t really deserted. Her error was more akin to ‘being late for work’ than it was abandoning her post. She simply hadn’t gone on an assignment. It was, however, the final straw in a litany of transgressions. Dismissal was appropriate, and better than she deserved.

And truthfully, she no longer cared. She’d reached a plateau of apathy. 

It was interesting, though, that Kakashi delivered the news. “Why didn’t I receive a summons to the Hokage?” she asked him.

“You did,” he informed her, handing over the scroll. “Two days ago.”

She didn’t ask _Why didn’t the captain inform me then?_ The answer was evident in the exasperated set in his eyes. Another summons she'd missed. She’d disappointed Kakashi. For some reason, that bothered her more than the thought of not being with him. Her fingers coiled around the paper. Such a simple vessel for the delivery of bad news. No personal affectation. Just words.

_Flimsy paper news. Heavy words contained within. Nothing left again._

“I’m sorry,” she muttered. The words were tasteless and she already wanted them back.

“So am I,” he responded. 

His reply surprised her, mostly because she didn’t know what he was apologizing _for_. “About what?” More words she wanted back. 

 _“So many things.”_ His voice was more schooled than ever. Every inflection and emotion that might have been in it were purely imagined by her. “Yugao,” he added after a moment. “When you’re ready… ANBU _will_ take you back. I’m not supposed to tell you that. But _be ready._ You’re not a child anymore. Next time, it has to be what you _want_ , and not what you _need.”_

“And you, Kakashi?”

“Hm?”

“ANBU… is it what _you_ want, or what you _need?”_

“It’s what I deserve. I told you before to find a better role model. Yugao… I’ve watched you claw your way out of the darkness. Most of us aren’t that lucky. If you want my opinion, don’t come back to this. Be free.”

Bitterness soured her tongue. “You don’t think I can handle it,” she snarled, her fist crumpling the paper.

His hands slid up the sides of her face. “I think you were born for it,” he admitted quietly. “But you’re too beautiful to live in the shade.” 

 _“Full moon, sun mirror. Cereus blooms at midnight. Beauty in shadow.”_ She took a deep breath, steeled her heart. “Kakashi, I would—“

“I know, and that’s why it’s best if you don’t. Try the sun awhile. If you won’t do it for you, do it for me.”

She couldn’t breathe. “Is this your order, senpai?”

“If that’s what it takes… yes.” Voice cold. Eyes cold. Cold as living death. Starved to death. Denied warmth, denied color, denied love. 

She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t, so she stole his kiss. She’d always been quicker than him, and she had his mask torn down and her lips pressed to his before he had a chance to retreat. It was the first time she’d chosen to kiss anyone, and she wanted it to be exactly how she desired. So she took, she consumed, burned hot and bright to prove that she could-- _that he could, too_ \--and then fled before he could ruin it with words. 

* * *

 

She poured her soul into her sword. Cold, sharp, capable of saving or severing in equal measure. She flowed from one form to another, eyes following the paths of cold moonlight it cut into the sun. 

_Moonlight in the sword. Bright edges killing bad things. Life and death in one._

_The girl is nothing. Nothing left and nowhere home. Sole desire denied._

_Love is a grey shade. Grey is light compared to black. Grey, her brightest hope._

She burned. Her heart burned. Her eyes burned. Her fury burned. She burned and burned and burned, reforging her sword and herself. Her blade arced over her head to crack down upon imaginary skulls, swept in half moons to decapitate or cleave in two. She parried phantoms, slashed at memories, drove the point of her blade through the black hearts of evil. She felt like a blur. She sensed the atmosphere around her shivering and skipping frames, but the length of narrow steel she controlled was the most solid, real object in her life. Reliable. Unwavering. The sword gave back exactly what she gave it. Predictable, comfortable. 

Her dance was interrupted by the first bright note of music, steel on steel, ringing along her nerves. Her eyes shut briefly, letting the music in. She was empty, blank and starving, and it was the most beautiful sound she’d ever heard. The tune sang along her veins, seized her with a magic she’d never known. She _needed_ to know how that song ended. Her toes stepped lightly to the melody that yet echoed in her ears, and a moment later the second refrain began. It was just as sweet as before, honey given voice. She hummed along, sucked in a breath, and lost herself to it. The pace increased, faster, brighter, louder, again and again and _again._

She didn’t know she was smiling. She didn’t know she was crying. She did know she was _living,_ and it was enough. 

Until the next expected note dropped into silence. Her sword hit nothing. Her eyes flew open, alarmed, the discord jarring her into reality. She stumbled into the empty blow, surprised and—if she was honest with herself—saddened by the loss. Then a boot planted between her shoulder blades and pitched her forward, knocking all of the breath from her lungs. She rolled onto her back, ready to attack, the glinting point of a sword less than a centimeter from her nose. She froze.

It was the shinobi from before, that same small smile and plain face. But there was a fire in his eyes that she’d never seen in _anyone_ before. It resonated with her, somehow, somewhere deep. Something visceral shifted, the first movement away from comfortable madness and into the unknown. A thing she didn't understand and couldn't know how to even if she tried. It had been a very long time since she'd been so scared. 

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” he said, replacing the tip of his sword with his hand instead. “I never got your name.”

Without really thinking about it, she laced her fingers through his and let him pull her up. His hand was tough and calloused, but warm and strong. “Uzuki Yugao,” her voice answered for her. The rest of her was still somewhat lost. She didn’t make acquaintances. She didn’t have friends. This was entirely uncharted territory, and though her hand was firmly _his_ , her heart was confused and her eyes were for someone else. 

“Gekko Hayate,” he supplied. “Are you looking for someone?”

Yes, she was, and for some reason that annoyed her. Besides, he wasn’t there. She knew by the pronounced lack of his chakra signature. Her eyes were just too stupid to care about the facts. “No,” she answered instead. _I’ve already found who I was looking for._ She knew it. She felt it. She had one arm in Kakashi’s shadow and one in Hayate’s hand. But now her eyes were forward, drawn to unfamiliar brightness, a moth drawn to dangerous open flame.

_Try the sun awhile._

_“In between she stands. Light at left, darkness at right. Without light, she dies.”_

“Sounds like you’re talking about the moon,” he said. “And a haiku, too. Brilliant.”

She blinked. 

“You’re magnificent with that blade,” he told her, smile widening. “Where did you learn?”

She blinked again, unable to process compliments. 

After a minute, his lips quirked with amusement. “I _have to_ know more about you. I’ll wait as long as it takes.”

She  _was_  the moon, halfway empty but halfway full, too, one foot in the shadows and one in the light. Kakashi was her dark reflection, her discord, the same, the mirror of her darkness. Here was her bright reflection, opposite in every way yet still the same. Smile, an inverse of her frown. Plain and average, the reverse of her unasked-for beauty. And yet, they knew the same song, harmonized naturally, effortlessly.

The moon could only reflect. Without the sun, it didn’t exist. And he shone _so brightly_ as to blind her to aught else.

She hadn’t been looking for him, but she found him anyway. Her other half. She’d not go another moment without that song in her life. She felt the chill of midnight at her back, but she would never look there again. 


	6. Waning Gibbous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> Waning gibbous: right side 99-51% lit disk

Every sense and skill she had sharpened to a point more fatal than any blade. Her world revolved around Gekko Hayate, and she revolved around his world. With her eyes and ears focused upon him, she saw everything and nothing at once. She analyzed the angle of his chin when it tilted just right, dimples nudging his eyes, revealing the barest flash of teeth. She memorized the vibration of his voice when it bled into his contented sigh after a workout. She could describe the exact hue of his hair. She knew his measurements—just shy of 130 pounds, five foot nine, though he stooped slightly—and also that he was ambidextrous, a good trait for any swordsman.

She knew too much, about his most inocuous habits. He had the occasional tendency to scratch the underside of his chin and around his neck. He smiled often, though only slightly, sometimes when nothing was even said. The grin was rarer, and usually happened during conversation. She never heard him laugh, though, beyond a soft chuckle. He was quiet. His voice was calm and soothing. 

But she didn’t understand the creature he was, so like her yet so not. He was relaxed, genuinely so. He seemed almost too at ease, and though her mind wished to assign the word ‘lazy,’ she knew it to be untrue. Even at rest, his muscles were a hair trigger away from battle ready, and his reflexes were sharp. His face told her that he was usually joking. His blade told her the opposite. She was as confused as she was fascinated, but as he was a variable undefined, she dared not touch.

He did. Often. 

It began as what she had to believe was an accident. Just a hand against her arm that could just as easily have been a sparring maneuver… but he’d rested there just a moment too long, and his smirk was there. She spent enough time wondering if she’d imagined it that he won the clash again. He won more than ninety percent of the time.

Yugao didn’t know she hated losing so much. 

She tried harder, but the result continued to be the same. Advance. Slash. Duck. Parry. Step. Lunge. Touch.

Confusion. _Loss._

The more furious her strikes became, the more daring his touches grew. Accidental hip checks. His grip around her wrist. A brief grasp at her hip to move her. A block that brought his face too close. The smirk was always there, subdued yet glaringly obvious. It wasn’t long before she had to accept the reality of what was happening. _Attention_. He touched her because he _wanted_ to touch her. 

She didn’t like being touched. What began as a tentative journey into uncharted curiosity morphed into wild, feline suspicion, claws at the ready.

From the second she figured out that he meant to touch her, meant to feel her, to _have_ her, logic abandoned her. Her self fled into a walled fortress of instinct. The dynamic between them changed. Though she still needed—desperately—to cross her blade with his, she acquired the burgeoning urge to kill him, too. It sizzled along her every nerve, this _need_ to kill, for he had _dared_ _touch._ The ferocity of her strikes increased, put him on the defensive. The surprise was only evident in the slight widening of his eyes, but just as quickly as he showed it, his brow furrowed with fierce concentration. For several heartbeats, they were equally matched. Steel raked the air between them, cold and merciless. Their eyes met, hot and searing with violence. But where Yugao’s lips curled in a rictus snarl, Hayate’s face was relaxed, and the smirk threatened. 

Her grasp on sanity winked out and the blackness consumed. Rage, wrath, and desperation skeined along the steel, erupted into bright flashes of near-death between them. Justice fueled her fury. He needed to be punished, to feel the bite of anger, to—

“What are you thinking, right now?” he asked as strength warred with strength, silent, shivering and still between them. His voice was too placid and quiet— _I hate it, I hate it, I hate him_ —but his power was overwhelming. One tilt in her direction, and he’d be victorious. She could feel it in the conviction of steel.

“I want to kill you,” she snarled, honest words betraying her motive. Muscles coiled, fueled by adrenaline and feminine furor for her last onslaught. She rallied her sword, shoved him back. The cry that burst from her throat was ice and anger. Her sword was part of her, the thin line he had crossed. It was too fast to follow, too quick to be seen, but _she_ knew where it was. She could not lose this part of herself, never had and never could. She would defeat him with steel. He would regret what he had done. _Oh, yes._

He bit his lip and parried against her attack. “You’re lying,” he observed calmly.

His accusation echoed in her empty chest. _Lying… lying… lying…_ “You’re wrong,” she snapped back.

As he dipped and weaved to avoid what he could of her slashes—though he took several along the ribs and arms—he laughed. “It’s too easy”— _duck, step_ —“to lie,” he explained. “We often say things—we don’t mean. But your sword,” he went on, raising his own to stop a blow that would have cleaved him in two from eyebrows to toes, “does not lie.” 

Their eyes locked, and in them she found a shocking sense of serenity. His face had never lied. He smirked as he held off her strike with the strength of a man twice his size. His muscles didn’t even tremble. “You touched me,” she hissed through her teeth, holding onto the last vestiges of her anger. Surely _that much_ was unforgivable.

“I won’t ever lie to you,” he murmured. “I would ask that you don’t lie to me.”

“I haven’t!” 

“You don’t want to kill me, Yugao. Your eyes do. Your words do. But none of that matters if your sword doesn’t.” White steel rippled between them, and she was pushed back. Then, to her surprise, he threw his sword away. He stared at her, calm and accepting. Whatever might come. “Yes,” he whispered, his voice seething with wanton, wicked things, “I touched you. I’m not sorry. Kill me now, or…”

He never finished the sentence, merely let it hang there for her to fill in the blank. Too many raw, spiked emotions boiled in her heart. With a cry of outrage, she charged him, meaning to pierce him through the heart. He scared her and thrilled her in equal measure. It was simply too much to take. At the least second she closed her eyes, unwilling to see him die at her hands. It would be better when it was over, she surmised. 

But to her surprise, she met nothing but air, and when she opened her eyes, he was gone. More surprising, still, was the liberating sense of relief that she hadn’t done what she intended. She threw the sword away and watched it fall across his. When she turned, he was there, smirking. How he'd survived didn't matter right at that moment. There was another unknown between them that she needed to understand, and she would understand it _right now_. 

She smiled back, stepped close. She allowed her fingertips to trace the jawline responsible for daring to smile at her. She touched and trusted with a single word.

“Or.”

 

 


	7. Last Quarter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> Last quarter: right side lit disk 50%

For a long, long time, swordplay was like music, and never like work. It was the song of violence, but in the way they performed, the tune was controlled, structured and guided. Music, but with a key and composer. Danger, but with a purpose and captain. She had thought she could become no sharper, and she was wrong. She had been unrefined, craggy ore when she met him. Day by day, she knew she was getting stronger, forged into peerless steel. But she did so because she reveled in it. She trained because she found joy in it. 

In _him._

Hayate was the master of his craft. He had the grace and strength of a tiger. Every movement was precise and unwasted, each step delicately placed and perfect. She envied his effortless dominion of sword forms. She coveted his tallying victories over her. His sword became the needle of her compass. She trained her feet to match his, trained her body to mirror his steps to keep the balance between them. He was making her better. She didn’t even know, then, how true that really was. 

ANBU’s importance bled away. She didn’t spare even a thought for what—or whom—had been left behind. It was impossible to miss what amounted to whole lot of nothing. Empty satisfaction. Unrequited love. Mislabeled justice. She’d misused her position to find vindication in killing. She’d shamed herself by enjoying it. She’d found a kindred spirit somewhere in the madness and assumed that like souls equaled some kind of righteousness. Because _they_ had understood each other, no one else needed to. It was the only comfort she thought to ever need. How _small_ her world had been.

She had been wrong in so many ways, and she’d spent her life thinking she’d been right. _So_ right. _More_ right than everyone else. Instead what she found was that she’d been comparing her shine to the others inside a coal mine. None of them were bright sparks there. She had been queen of the darkness, where no one saw and no one cared.

* * *

 

His laugh focused her senses on something _pure_. Where before her mind wandered in the dark woods of necessary solitude, helter skelter from kill to kill and nightmare to nightmare, he showed her the way out. Every time she heard his laugh, she dragged herself further out of her despairs.

His gaze awakened her heart. She’d known nothing but the cold dead eyes of the merciless, sometimes the glassy dullness of pity. She’d never known that eyes could laugh, that they could say _so much_ with only a glance. 

His touch livened her skin. They were not the greedy paws of selfishness. They were the reverence of an appreciative man. He saw _her_ and loved _her_ , body made better by its soul. He could have been blind and loved her no less; it was evident in the way he handled her.

His tongue tasted of _life,_ hope, and all things vibrant. Everything she had known was grey, cold, and lifeless unless it hurt. She’d made it that way, for it was calmer. It kept her sane. Small worlds were easy to navigate. Snug walls could imitate a hug. The shadows kept her from being exposed when she didn’t wish it. Hayate woke her, stirred her, riled her into a storm of sensations that were _good_. Safe. Desired. 

His scent upon her skin was the reminder she needed when he was no longer there. To _stay strong._ To _be better._ To adore the warmth of the sun upon her face. To remain calm even when the world turned and churned and changed, changed, _changed._

Color, music, life and light. All of these things were new to her, and all of them were welcome. Everything bleak and dismal fell away. Her childhood, if she'd had such a thing, an evil memory that only brought her pain. ANBU, a devil’s haven for the wicked and unclean to hide. Kakashi, her dark reflection and her anchor to hell, but an anchor nonetheless. She didn’t actively banish the thoughts; they just dissipated as if they never were. There was only Hayate.

 _No,_ there was only Hayate _and Yugao_ , forever in perfect balance. Blade to blade. Hand to hand. Skin to skin. Heart to heart. She was in love with him before she knew what it meant.

* * *

“What is ANBU like?” he asked her one evening. His tone was careful and quiet. 

She appreciated that. “Dangerous,” she answered after a moment.

His head tipped over on the pillow, observing. Assessing. She felt in it a scrying for more answers than that, as if he’d heard the extra meanings in her answer. They were the meanings she’d put there for herself, so she could be honest and yet tell him nothing. He saw without seeing and heard without his ears. His face grew more serious as his fingers touched the soft line of her cheek bone. “Is that why you left it?” he wondered.

“No. I don’t fear any level of danger.” He waited, though. He needed her answer. “I wasn’t…” _Wasn’t what?_ “…Quite ready.” 

His eyes flickered down and away—“Will you go back?”—to hide his concern.

She didn’t want to lie, and there wasn’t a way to hide the truth within the truth. “Maybe. Are you afraid I might die?”

“No," he lied.

Maybe... “That I might be assigned to kill you?”

The sudden hot spike of intensity dark in his eyes made her breath catch. Questions birthed deep in her thoughts, a hundred reasons why her gentle lover might think he’d make a hit list of any kind. She was in the midst of wondering such malevolent things when he kissed her and banished her unwelcome train of thought. “No, Yugao. Death by your hand would be the sweetest mercy.”

Her eyelashes fluttered with confusion. “Why would you say that?”

“Because I’m already dying.”


	8. Waning Crescent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> Waning Crescent: right side lit disk 1-49%

 

Strange thoughts occurred when the mind was opened fully. Strange, meandering, deep, _deep_ thoughts. Like how the last sliver of the moon looked so much like the mirage a blade made when it cut the air too fast. Or how it might resemble a perfect smile. Or how the shadowy part was only just visible, a reminder that it was always _there_ , whether it could be seen or not. In reality, the moon was always full. Arbitrary percentage of the disk bright and cheerful, one hundred percent minus _that_ in total darkness. Part shadow, part light. Part bad things, part good things, warring with one another at all times, slow tug of war. Slow dance. Slow adventure, infinitesimal, undetectable tiptoe steps at a time. Which side was she? The dying light, or the impending darkness? 

_Light dies, a slow death._

His face appeared in her thoughts, unbidden, flashes of personality. Smile, smirk, absently lost in thought, tired, sated, wicked. The hair-thin barb in her field of vision stabbed her heart. The blood that bled free was as cold as the night itself. 

Her eyes dropped to her hands, thumbs curled beneath the sheath of her sword, fingers fanned flat over the top. Only the fuzzed edges of her fingers were visible, like the nip of light above. _So I am the darkness,_ she thought grimly, registering the approaching signature of an answering melancholy. Her dark mirror, unchanged. The shadowy part of the moon. 

_Only shadows can endure._

“Kakashi.” 

“Yugao.”

The chirping of crickets disturbed the silence, an undulating wave of cacophany. Too cheerful. Eerie and insistent. Crickets never had anything else to say. Just inane chattering about the weather, over and over again, ad nauseum.  _Twenty-two degrees._   _Twenty-two degrees._   _Twenty-two degrees._

 _Why are you here, Kakashi?_ She wanted to ask. She didn’t. It didn’t matter. _Nothing_ mattered. Least of all, him. Least of all, her. She’d tasted the light, and it was poisonous. She knew how to hurt now. She knew how to feel and how to laugh and how to love. She should have known better. To love, _truly_ love, was naught but agony. 

But despite the darkness swallowing her whole, she knew she didn’t want it anymore, so she remained silent.

“Your skills have improved,” he observed.

Something ugly unfurled in her chest, gnashing teeth and growling, low rumbles of displeasure. _I don’t want your voice,_ she thought of both of them. Tentatively, she lifted her eyes back to the faint glow above. Faint it might be, but it was the only light around. _Dying. It’s dying. He’s dying._ What would happen when the light went out? The hideousness within grew and fattened, sinking claws into her heart and stomach, biting into her throat. _Maybe I’m dying, too._

He sat anyway, his bare toes dangling in the guttering light. _He dares!_

“That’s not yours,” she snarled. 

“What isn’t?” 

She blinked. Had she said that? “Nevermind.”

He peered at her shrewdly from his one visible eye. Not the bloody, angry scarred one. The other one. The sad, black one. “Did I ever tell you about my genin team?”

She licked her lips. Once upon a time, she’d really wanted to know about Kakashi’s past. Now… it wouldn’t change anything. Of course, he knew very well he’d never told her. It was a rhetorical question. “No,” she croaked.

“The fourth Hokage was my sensei.”

Her curiosity piqued. _The Yellow Flash?_

“I had what I considered the worst team in history. An idiot named Obito and a weak girl he liked. Rin. They were less than me in every way.” He paused. “That’s what I thought, then.”

Curiosity, they said, was a woman’s folly. “And now?”

“Now they’re dead. Obito because of my mistake.”

“And Rin?”

A heavy, tortured sigh escaped his lips in lieu of an answer. And then, on the heels of that sigh, another silence.

He waited. _Expectantly_ , watching her from the corner of one patient eye. It dawned on her then: Kakashi _knew_. Something. He knew _her_ , though the significance of _why_ he’d come was as hard to capture as the slick shadows between them. The foulness that ate her from within wrung the words out of her, though she didn’t want to hear them said aloud. “Hayate’s sick.”

“I know.”

“He’s dying.” The emptiness roared, but its voice was a woman's scream.

“I know.”

“He’s—He’s—“

Rough pressure bit her shoulder, and with it her balance faltered. “I know,” he said again. The light winked out as her face crashed into his chest. Everything scrambled together. Everything hurt. Everything was wet and salty and ugly and wan. She knew she was weeping. And though she didn’t understand why, he let her, until there was nothing left inside her to cry out. As dead inside as she was when she’d joined ANBU. Full circle. No difference, hiding the pain behind a mask of cool indifference.

When she was finished composing herself, he severed physical contact and spoke again. “The dying light or the living shadow, Yugao. Unlike your namesake, we cannot be both.”

“It’s too painful. I cannot choose.”

His defenses leapt back into place, warmth bleeding from his voice. Back into the darkness he crept. “You must.”

She let him go there alone. As he retreated, away from her and into the night where he belonged, she came to a decision.  

_Not all light is seen._

* * *

"I wasn't sure you'd come back," he admitted.

 _From the edge of despair,_ her mind added. Her voice answered, "Neither was I."

"I wanted to tell you sooner," he confessed.

"It doesn't matter," she spoke as she kicked out of her boots. "So you're dying." She shrugged out of her clothes at the door and went to him clad in scant moonlight. She brushed sensitive palms against his precious, perfect face and closed her eyes. She knew every line of that face, every shape and every expression. "We're _all_ dying. Today, tomorrow, or ten years from now. I've already learned everything there is to know of death. You're the only one who makes me feel _alive_. So we're both dying.

"But until then, we're both living."

 


	9. New Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phases of the moon  
> \--  
> New Moon: disk completely in shadow

“I want to be ANBU,” she said, and her voice was rich with purpose. 

Sarutobi Hiruzen turned from the window, and his first thought was that he was having deja vu; just a daydream, perhaps... the wishful thinking of an old man. But no… she _was_ there. No longer a phantom and no longer a child. Her hair was different—cleaner, shinier, longer; her posture was different—straighter, practiced and disciplined; she was taller, too. _Everything_ about her was different. Everything except her name. 

He had, at some point, learned her age, but as with most extraneous detail, he’d forgotten. Nothing was more frustrating to an elite shinobi than watching his own acuity slowly deteriorate. His memory wasn't what it used to be. She might have been twenty, but then again, he’d never been a good judge of age. The important thing was that she was no longer a child. But it was her eyes that stopped his careful analysis. Perhaps the hell of ANBU life had been kinder to her than her family had been, or perhaps something else had happened to her along the way. Whatever it was, Uzuki Yugao was _sharp_ , tempered and refined. On one side of the balance was a shinobi that _belonged_ , fully trained and elite, devoted and dutiful.

She’d survived the trials of childhood, and _he_ still had his soul—for now. The balance steadied and stayed.

The mystery lay in her eyes. Bright and alert, eyes that _saw_ and _had seen._ If indeed eyes were the windows of the soul, Yugao’s was of the highest quality. There was something there that wasn’t before, and it was so calm and beautiful that he ended up smiling with satisfaction. She even smiled back, confident and knowing. And _that_ … that had _never_ happened before. He cleared his throat once, and it was all that he needed. She was a woman now, after all. Her eyes were more ancient than before. But they were softer.

 _She_ was rock solid. Half-lidded, dark eyes stared back at him. She was not intimidated by him, nor anyone. If she was afraid of anything--if she'd ever been afraid at all--it never showed. It was a superpower she had earned through her own suffering. She’d seen every terror known to mankind. What was there left to fear? He asked her none of the questions as before— _who, where, what, when, why_ —and instead asked a different one. A more important one. One he probably should have asked her time and again since she’d been inducted into ANBU in the first place.

“How are you?”

“I’m alive,” she responded with a delicate shrug and the hint of a smirk. “It’s enough.”

...

He drafted the papers. He sat quietly with his hands folded over his desktop, trying not to yawn, while she filled in the pertinent information. When she was finished, she thanked him as she stood and kissed his cheek before striding to the door. He didn’t ask any more questions. Though he’d never had the knack for guessing age, he’d been extraordinarily fortunate in his ability to select integrity, and she had that. And when the door shut, he shook with silent sobs of relief. She once wanted to be a ghost, had actively courted death, but against all the odds, had had her wish denied. Hell had spat her back out for the living, whole and unbroken. He prayed harder than he ever had before, thanking the heavens above that he’d saved this _one_ while so many others remained lost to their demons. It wasn’t often that the gods told him he’d done well, and he’d wondered that too often.

She was the only ANBU that he’d dismissed and allowed back in again. She’d made history for a second time. 

But she was _his_ ANBU. Wholly his, the only one among dozens that he knew without a doubt could no longer be tempted by Danzo’s darkness. Her emptiness was gone. There was a story there, somewhere... a _damned good_ story. But as with her first tale, he let her keep the details, to let her think she could keep such secrets private. Konoha had a way of divulging its secrets in good time, and he was a patient man with an appreciation for a good story. Once upon a time, Sarutobi had written the ending to a little girl's horror story. But the pen of the sequel to the young woman who'd exited his office just now belonged to another author.  

And though she’d killed more people than any ANBU half again her age, she’d already learned the lesson that most ANBU sought their entire lives without even realizing: ANBU wasn’t about darkness. At its deepest foundation, ANBU wasn't about death. ANBU was about _life_. About preservation, protection, and rescue.

He turned back to his window and watched her walk away from the tower, lithe with shinobi grace and lovely with rare physical beauty. "And she lived happily ever after...

"The end."


End file.
